Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359: DX10 to go, please!
by Jarred Walton on August 31, 2007 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Design and Appearance
Anyone looking for a flashier notebook will definitely appreciate the Satellite X205. The top of the unit is a shiny multi-shade red, and a few red lights on the notebook continue this motif.
Trying to take a picture that would accurately captured the appearance of the cover proved difficult. Despite how the picture looks, the top panel definitely isn't black. We like the cover quite a bit, although others' taste may vary. We also found the top cover to be relatively scratch resistant; fingerprints, on the other hand, were very visible and somewhat difficult to wipe off without using some form of cleaner.
There are no noteworthy features on the rear of the laptop -- unless anyone considers hinges noteworthy? The main feature on the front of the notebook is the various audio jacks. S/PDIF out, line-in, speaker out, and headphone jacks are included. As mentioned on the previous page, only stereo audio is supported unless you use the digital outputs. At the far left (and difficult to see under the Satellite logo) is a small switch to turn the WiFi on or off. To the right of the audio jacks is a volume knob, which we again found to be more useful than the touch-sensitive volume controls used on other notebooks. The only other feature on the front of the notebook is the flash memory reader.
The left side of the notebook is primarily dedicated towards video connections. Support is included for VGA, S-Video, and HDMI. At the far back is the power socket and to the right of the VGA port is one of the large ventilation grilles. Two USB ports, a mini-FireWire port, and a LAN port are also present. At the front of the notebook is an ExpressCard/54 slot.
The right side includes four more USB ports, the modem jack, another ventilation area, a Kensington lock socket, and the optical drive. Toshiba is one of the major backers of the HD-DVD format, so it's not too surprising that the Satellite X205 includes an HD-DVD drive. One nice software feature included is the ability to set the optical drive to quiet operation, which runs the drive at a lower speed but reduces vibrations and noise.
Considering the size of the chassis, there is quite frankly a lot of wasted space. The added size of the chassis does make cooling less of a concern, since there should be plenty of room for air to move throughout the internals. When we consider that Alienware manages to cram two higher performance graphics chips and additional connections onto a shorter chassis, we have to wonder why Toshiba went this route. Also note in the above pictures how tall the feet on the bottom of the laptop are. They add almost an extra half inch to the height, but they cannot be removed short of using a hacksaw. For users that truly intend to use this as a desktop replacement notebook that will spend the majority of its time sitting on a table, this is actually a good thing since the added height provides for better air intake on the bottom of the notebook. On the other hand, when you have the notebook sitting on your lap the feet can leave small impressions and become somewhat uncomfortable.
Anyone looking for a flashier notebook will definitely appreciate the Satellite X205. The top of the unit is a shiny multi-shade red, and a few red lights on the notebook continue this motif.
 |
Trying to take a picture that would accurately captured the appearance of the cover proved difficult. Despite how the picture looks, the top panel definitely isn't black. We like the cover quite a bit, although others' taste may vary. We also found the top cover to be relatively scratch resistant; fingerprints, on the other hand, were very visible and somewhat difficult to wipe off without using some form of cleaner.
 |
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There are no noteworthy features on the rear of the laptop -- unless anyone considers hinges noteworthy? The main feature on the front of the notebook is the various audio jacks. S/PDIF out, line-in, speaker out, and headphone jacks are included. As mentioned on the previous page, only stereo audio is supported unless you use the digital outputs. At the far left (and difficult to see under the Satellite logo) is a small switch to turn the WiFi on or off. To the right of the audio jacks is a volume knob, which we again found to be more useful than the touch-sensitive volume controls used on other notebooks. The only other feature on the front of the notebook is the flash memory reader.
 |
The left side of the notebook is primarily dedicated towards video connections. Support is included for VGA, S-Video, and HDMI. At the far back is the power socket and to the right of the VGA port is one of the large ventilation grilles. Two USB ports, a mini-FireWire port, and a LAN port are also present. At the front of the notebook is an ExpressCard/54 slot.
 |
The right side includes four more USB ports, the modem jack, another ventilation area, a Kensington lock socket, and the optical drive. Toshiba is one of the major backers of the HD-DVD format, so it's not too surprising that the Satellite X205 includes an HD-DVD drive. One nice software feature included is the ability to set the optical drive to quiet operation, which runs the drive at a lower speed but reduces vibrations and noise.
Considering the size of the chassis, there is quite frankly a lot of wasted space. The added size of the chassis does make cooling less of a concern, since there should be plenty of room for air to move throughout the internals. When we consider that Alienware manages to cram two higher performance graphics chips and additional connections onto a shorter chassis, we have to wonder why Toshiba went this route. Also note in the above pictures how tall the feet on the bottom of the laptop are. They add almost an extra half inch to the height, but they cannot be removed short of using a hacksaw. For users that truly intend to use this as a desktop replacement notebook that will spend the majority of its time sitting on a table, this is actually a good thing since the added height provides for better air intake on the bottom of the notebook. On the other hand, when you have the notebook sitting on your lap the feet can leave small impressions and become somewhat uncomfortable.
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torrent180 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
I have a question for X205 owners. How serious is the issue of the weight and size? I find it really hard to judge from the pics. Is it portable enough or would you really not take it out of the house?Thanks
Inkjammer - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
My X205 os slightly bulky, but I don't think it weighs that much at all. It's large, but portable. My old Alienware M7700 (Clevo D900T) felt like it weighed almost twice as much. It was slightly smaller, but weighed much, much less.torrent180 - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
So it's worth it eh, your happy with it right, no regrets?JarredWalton - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
My personal take is that it's bigger than any other 17" laptop I've used, so it required a larger bag than the 17" bag I have. Weight isn't my primary concern, but size... well, it could be better. Still, I don't think anyone that's after a true DTR is going to care too much. People looking for more portable laptops are probably already discounting 17" chassis designs.Inkjammer - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
I'd just like to chime in that jumping up to the 163.44 drivers available from www.laptopvideo2go.com does make quite a bit of difference in performance gaming wise -vs- the standard drivers available from Toshiba's website. My framerates were a somewhat smoother after making the driver jump.From what I understand, the 8700GT can be overclocked further with RivaTune and the 163.44 drivers rather nicely. I've not tested it on my x205 - yet. I've gotta re-install Vista Ultimate since I'm upgrading the primary HD in the system (the Hitachi hybrid-HD) to a Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 200GB drive.
If the 8700GT does, in fact, OC well it may add a lot more value to the system.
Although, I do find one thing about your review setup odd. My x205's primary 160GB HD is a Hitachi HTS541616J9A00 Hybrid HD w/392MB (387MB reorted) of flash while the secondary is a Toshiba MK1637GSX.
JarredWalton - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
Exactly how do you make the 163.44 drivers work? I grabbed them and have now wasted the past two hours attempting to make them work. There's no INF for the 163.44 drivers on LV2G, so I tried to hack one together and apparently failed. Miserably. My experience in the past has been that the regular driver updates are not remotely optimized for the laptop chipsets, but if that's not the case here I'd certainly be interested in giving it a shot.The second question is what you use for overclocking the GPU. Coolbits doesn't work under Vista, as far as I can see. What's the recommended utility? Personally, I don't think unofficial overclocking really adds that much value to a laptop. Remember: the 8700M GT is simply a clock speed increase relative to the 8600M GT. The 8600M GT is supposed to run at 475MHz, while the 8700M is speced for 625MHz. (RAM speed is the same 1400 MHz DDR in both cases.) There's almost certainly a bit more headroom available, but I'm not one to recommend pushing a laptop to the limits in terms of cooling.
As for the hard drives, I can guarantee that the two drives are the same in my particular test unit. However, it could be that shipping retail models switched to a hybrid drive. I don't know if this particular unit was manufactured several months earlier or might even be a prototype.
Regards,
Jarred Walton
Senior Editor, Displays and Laptops
http://www.AnandTech.com">http://www.AnandTech.com
Inkjammer - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
I had the same problem with the INF at first - it's somewhat hidden. On their driver list for Vista, instead of clicking the download link, click the driver version number (163.44) and it will take you to a forum posting that has far more indepth information, plus a direct link to the INF. It's also got a good amount of information, errata and known isues that the site and users that has been found while using the newer drivers.Windows Vista 32-bit Drivers
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?show...">http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/index.php?show...
Direct link to the modified INF:
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/160series/16344...">http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/infs/160series/16344...
My system came with a Hitachi HHD drive as primary, but I honestly can't tell if there's any benefit from it. Upon first boot, my X205 took near ten minutes to load up primary due to bloatware. I'm not sure if the test unit you received had a lot of pre-installed software, but mine had more than I'd ever seen before on any system. Wiping the drive and installing from a Vista DVD was almost a must - which is unfortunate for this laptop.
LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Sounds like the last Toshiba I've worked on...between the extras, and the Toshiba apps, it was nothing short of horrible. The worst part is, it's very hard to tell which Toshiba apps are necessary, and the ones that the average user might consider useful often have several memory-resident apps that take a ton of RAM and really slow boot time. It was worse than any other vendor I've seen to date (including HP, Dell, etc.)
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
I don't recall it taking that long to boot up when I first started the system, but then I probably wasn't paying close attention. First boot of Windows Vista always seems to take quite a while. Anyway, there's definitely a lot of preinstalled software that isn't necessary. I hinted at this on page 3: "Toshiba places a large sticker on the palm rest that lists most of the laptop features, along with providing an advertisement for Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. Given the large advertisement, we were a bit surprised that the game isn't even included (though plenty of other software comes preinstalled)." I probably should have been more specific, but I will say more on this in the follow-up article.As far as getting rid of all of the bloatware, I didn't find it to be that difficult. Yes, it took about an hour and several reboots to uninstall all of the extra stuff (Wild Tangent games, McAfee Security Suite, Microsoft Office 2007 trial, etc.) but once done the system ran quite well. It's pretty irritating when I think about how many users will never get around to uninstalling all the extra junk, though.
strikeback03 - Friday, August 31, 2007 - link
Considering Toshiba's past problems with overheating notebooks, lots of space for cooling is probably not a bad thing.